Subsistence Farming

Subsistence Farming, form of agriculture where farmers aim to provide enough food for themselves and their families, often within a village economy where women do much of the cultivation. Cultivation takes place on small farms using simple techniques, and concentrates on the basic foodstuffs needed to sustain life, often cereal crops such as rice (in South East Asia) and millet (in West Africa). Any surplus production is sold or bartered to provide those items that the farmer cannot produce.

Subsistence agriculture pure and simple is relatively rare today, although subsistence-orientated farming systems are widespread in the poorest countries of the world, where a large proportion of the workforce may be classified as subsistence farmers. In the West African states of Burkina Faso and Chad, for example, 80 per cent of the workforce is engaged in subsistence farming. Rapidly growing populations mean that farms are progressively divided among more people, and in many developing countries the resultant decline in farm size accounts for the displacement of people from the rural districts and large-scale migrations to urban areas. In the Philippines, farms are now commonly between 1 and 2 hectares (2y and 5 acres), and many are not large enough to sustain an entire family. Elsewhere in the developing world, subsistence agriculture is being increasingly confined to the poorest land, as areas that were once thought of as marginal are pressed into use for the growth of cash crops, necessary to earn foreign currency. Poor land means low productivity and increased vulnerability to bad weather (especially drought), which further restricts yields. Insufficient rainfall in rice-growing areas can quickly reduce yields from the expected 5 tonnes per hectare to 1 tonne. The pressure to grow more food from land of limited capacity is resulting in the abandonment of fallow periods and the acceleration of soil erosion, both of which severely restrict the viability of a subsistence economy. In Ghana, subsistence usually means that families produce between 60 and 90 per cent of their food, although changing environmental conditions may result in the proportions of food produced for survival and for sale varying without warning from season to season and from year to year.

In an attempt to reduce dependence on subsistence, many farmers in economically developing countries have turned to buying-in fertilizer and improved seed varieties in order to produce crops for sale as well as for personal consumption. Expanding urban markets have boosted this approach and in a few countries, such as South Africa, plans designed to restore small-scale farming have been implemented as a form of latter-day subsistence. However, price fluctuations are common and efforts to increase food production in this way may not generate the hoped-for returns.

In the countries of the more developed world, isolated pockets of subsistence farming may still be found, but in many cases it is the desire to preserve a traditional way of life rather than the urgent need for food that keeps the practice alive. Crofting in the highlands and islands of Scotland is a form of subsistence farming which continues to this day, but few, if any, people are entirely dependent upon it. Nonetheless, government plans in the 1990s to prevent the continuing cultivation of 600 hectares (1,500 acres) of arable land by crofters on the Hebridean Island of Berneray in favour of the protection of wild birds and rare plants were strongly resisted.